I f Jamaal Bowman is the progressive Squad’s most imperiled member, he only has himself to blame. But that’s not how Bowman or his allies on the far left see it. With the benefit of hindsight, we can conclude that the progressive congressman’s ceaseless antagonism toward Jews in his district — one which is situated in the most Jewish city in America — was ill-considered. And yet, he and his supporters are shifting the blame for Bowman’s troubles onto a readymade scapegoat: the Jews. Yes, again.
This week, a reporter for the left-leaning outlet Sludge — which deserves credit for, if nothing else, observing truth in advertising — revealed that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s (AIPAC) political-action committee, the United Democracy Project (UDP), has reserved $1.9 million in advertising designed to boost Bowman’s challenger, Westchester County executive George Latimer.
The effort to oust Bowman from federal office has been denounced by his fellow Squad members and anti-Israel groups. Among them, the ostensibly Jewish organization “If Not Now” — a group that unironically uses the term “Nakba,” describes the failure of the combined Arab armies to wipe Israel off the face of the Earth in 1948 as a “catastrophe,” and argues that the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism “criminalizes the existence of Palestinian resistance” — ran to Bowman’s defense.
“UDP is overwhelmingly spending its millions in Democratic primaries, mostly against Black and brown Democratic incumbents who speak out against war and for the human rights of Palestinians,” read a statement from a consortium of groups calling themselves Jews for Jamaal. “This massive amount of spending distorts the political landscape, drowning out the needs and voices of everyday constituents with the interests of a few wealthy donors.” Presumably, the money the Jews for Jamaal have committed to his cause isn’t the misbegotten sort purloined via usury and extortion and designed to mesmerize unsuspecting Americans. These Jews are the good ones.
Bowman’s fellow Squad member, Representative Summer Lee (D., Pa.), went further still. AIPAC’s contributions to the political discourse aren’t just racist, but an “anti-democracy” attack, she said. “As somebody who knows these folks intimately,” she added, referring to the committee and its PAC, “I can speak to the damage UDP causes not just to the candidates they target and smear, but to the communities attached to us and democracy itself.”
There is, indeed, a conspiracy afoot, but not one conducted by a shady cabal of vaguely Hebraic moneyed interests. It’s right out in the open, fueled by American Jews who resent the mainstreaming of antisemitic rhetoric that followed, horrifically enough, the slaughter, rape, and kidnapping of Israelis on October 7.
Bowman is a prime offender. He called reports that Hamas raped Israeli Jews on 10/7 a “lie” inspired by Israeli “propaganda” — remarks for which he has expressed no regrets even though he has since acknowledged the veracity of the Israeli claims. He defended Louis Farrakhan, who deems Jews “termites” who worship at “the synagogue of Satan.” He has on more than one occasion been compelled to apologize for associating himself with speakers who celebrated the October massacre of Jews — Americans, among them — and appearing to endorse conspiracy theories surrounding the 9/11 attacks.
If these and many other episodes are not evidence of the anti-Jewish sentiments to which the congressman appears partial, they’re at least evidence of bad judgment in an elected official representing a district situated in New York City. We don’t need a conspiracy theory to explain the surge in opposition to Bowman’s continued tenure. That phenomenon came together organically.
The members of the Squad aren’t the only progressive activists concocting nefarious plots to explain why American Jews recoil at the hostility to which they’ve recently been subjected. Their nominally objective allies at the Washington Post are also getting in on the action.
A controversial piece in the Post this week alleged that New York City mayor Eric Adams might not have approved the deployment of police to Columbia University’s campus to restore the order disrupted by student demonstrators and outside agitators but for the haranguing of — you guessed it — the Jews.
The Post’s reporting details an effort to lobby Adams to disperse the protests by an informal group of “business titans” who organized themselves on a WhatsApp chat — wealthy financiers and industrialists with names like Lubetzky, Loeb, Blavatnik, Sitt, Schultz, and Kushner. “Overall, the messages offer a window into how some prominent individuals have wielded their money and power in an effort to shape American views of the Gaza war, as well as the actions of academic, business and political leaders — including New York’s mayor,” the Post’s report read.
This reporting caught the attention of some interested parties, including the Qatar-based media outlet Al Jazeera, which alleged that the clique uncovered by the Post is indicative of clandestine efforts across the country to foment “a pro-Israel mob” and harass “pro-Palestinian students” who “have faced the brunt of the violence at protests across the country, with few expressions of concern from authorities.”
Josh Kraushaar, the editor-in-chief of Jewish Insider, asked the Post’s leadership to explain precisely what they were thinking when they alleged that a cabal of moneyed Jewish interests were secretly pulling on the levers of government in New York. He received no satisfying answers in response. Why would he? The simplest explanation is that the efforts by prominent American Jews to exercise their constitutional right to lobby government and express their opinion are motivated by their interest in their own safety — a condition the menacing acts of violence and vandalism targeting Jews since the 10/7 massacre have recently cast in doubt. Far-left activists — be they the reporters at the Post or progressive activists in Congress — need some rationale to explain their opponents away. It cannot be a reciprocal response to their own actions. It must be some grand scheme.
“Operationally, most antisemitism is really just a conspiracy theory,” the Dispatch’s Jonah Goldberg wrote this week. “And like all conspiracy theories, the theorist starts with the conclusion and ‘reasons’ backward.” That’s precisely what we’re seeing from the Left, which eschews the simplest explanation for events and substitutes instead a series of Byzantine contrivances that serve to justify its own sense of persecution.
If Bowman, the Squad, and the increasingly suspect reporting team at the Post are discomfited by the allegation that their outputs are far too tolerant of antisemitic tropes, placing the blame for their condition on a shadowy Jewish intrigue is a funny way to go about showing it.